Mobile student information system

Mobile student informationsystem

Muhammad Asif and John KrogstieDepartment of Computer and Information Science,

Norwegian University of Science Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Abstract

Purpose – A mobile student information system (MSIS) based on mobile computing andcontext-aware application concepts can provide more user-centric information services to students.The purpose of this paper is to describe a system for providing relevent information to students on amobile platform.

Design/methodology/approach – The research followed a design science approach, includingsurveys to argue for the relevance of the system and evaluation of different versions of the systemusing a mobile system acceptance model (MSAM).

Findings – It was found that the intention to use such services is high, in particular relative toservices providing information based on localization and the personal schedule and interests of thestudent.

Originality/value – Several mobile systems exist that provide generic campus information forstudents and this paper describes one of the few systems of this sort of personalization which havebeen evaluated.

Keywords Students, Information systems, Mobile communication systems, Localization, Norway

Paper type Research paper

1. IntroductionMobile information systems are extending the possibilities for when and where toperform learning for different communities. In this paper we particularly addressstudents. Mobile computing is also changing the way of communication betweenteachers and students and can be used effectively to improve instructional quality.

Campus Information System for students is defined as “An interrelated group ofinformation resources, accessible by computer through the campus institutionalexternal and internal web environment, that a university places at the disposal of itsusers to enable them to consult it and/or provide a selection of significant andrelevant data, in the wide context of their university life in its academic,administrative and social senses, in order to improve student’s knowledge base”(Cobarsı́ et al., 2008).

This study describes a system called mobile student information system (MSIS)based on mobile computing and context-aware application concepts, which purpose isto provide more user-centric information services to students. Different services areproposed in this system combining location-aware and context-sensitive informationservices for the students at the university. Feedback gathered from the studentsthrough a survey based on usage of early versions of the system has been guiding thedirections and design of the current solution.

For any student it is important to have up to date information about currentexercise assignments, lectures, upcoming appointments and other daily activities.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1065-0741.htm

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Received September 2010Accepted October 2010

Campus-Wide Information SystemsVol. 28 No. 1, 2011

pp. 5-15q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1065-0741DOI 10.1108/10650741111097269

This is especially true for new students who are still unfamiliar with currentroutines and practices. They may also have trouble finding their way aroundcampus, often with hundreds of different auditoriums and rooms spread across alarge area. In such situations it is vital to have correct information available.Sometimes the communication of information can make use of a more activeapproach instead of asking the student to locate the information needed. Theinformation can be “pushed” to the person concerned based on his profile, requiringless effort and intervention from the user. Examples of these can be updates aboutclass, courses, automatic e-mail notifications, reminders from friends, schoolmates,or similar.

2. Related workA large number of context-based mobile services have been developed over the lastyears, in a number of different domains, such as tourism (Kabassi, 2010; Yu and Chang,2009), friend presence (Petersen et al., 2010), shopping (Hella and Krogstie, 2010).

MyCampus (2005) is a Semantic web environment for context-aware mobile servicesaimed at enhancing everyday campus life at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).myCampus utilize semantic web technology to provide services to its users, byaccessing and processing contextual information such as location and personalpreferences. A central element of the myCampus architecture is its use of SemanticeWallets that support the automated discovery and access of contextual resources.

MIT Mobile Web (2009) is providing a similar solution. This solution provides theservices like News, Events, Shuttle track service, campus map, people directory, andmobile access to MIT course management system. This solution utilizes mobile webtechnology to provide these services. The solution is provided for iPhone especially,but also available for other smart phones.

Harvard Mobile (2010) is another solution developed by Harvard University. Thissolution is based on web technology and provides services like news, events, courseupdates, map and a directory of people.

3. Presentation of MSISA fully functional prototype, named “MSIS”, has been developed and successfullytested at the NTNU campus. The main purpose of the system is to offer a number ofmobile services that can assist students in their daily activities. MSIS consists of threeparts: a lightweight client application for deployment on mobile devices, a web-basedportal, and a backend server which provides database storage, business logic, and anumber of public web services. The mobile application offers a friendly user interfaceto the various services offered by the system. An account profile is associated witheach user, which is used for authentication and storing of personal preferences. Theweb portal allows basic administration tasks through a web browser, such as editingpersonal information.

The services offered by MSIS includes a search tool for rooms and buildings oncampus with integrated maps and geographical positioning, a dynamic scheduleservice providing up-to-date information of weekly lectures, a news andannouncements service, collaboration service, e-mail service and mobile access tolearning resources.

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Services of MSISThis section describes the services developed for MSIS in brief.

Location search. This allows users to search for different “points of interest”throughout campus, for example lecture rooms, computer labs, canteens. It provides ashort description of the location, as well as a visual indication of the position of thelocation on a map. The map has zooming capabilities, supporting a potential unlimitednumber of zoom levels. It is also possible to obtain your own location based on theposition of the mobile device in a similar fashion to GPS technology outdoors, but alsoworking in-doors. The wi-fi based positioning technology eliminates the need for otherpositioning systems such as GPS. NTNU provides a WLAN-network with around1,700 access points covering the campus area which are exploited for these positioningservices (Figure 1).

To determine the position of the user (i.e. “Where am I?”) a wi-fi fingerprint isconstructed by measuring the signal strength of maximum three access points (AP)that are within the coverage area of the device. The received signal strength vectortogether with the unique MAC address (BSSID) of the access point (AP) constitutes thefingerprint. The fingerprint is then compared against a collection of knownfingerprints stored in the database, using an algorithm based on the EuclideanDistance formula. If a match is found, the location corresponding to the givenfingerprint is returned. The table of predetermined fingerprints is constructed in thesame way, by “mapping” points within the area of interest to location descriptors,which store relevant information about the location.

Lecture schedule planner. This allows users to view appointments scheduled for thecurrent week. At present, the service provides information about course lectures andexercise guidance hours. The schedule service retrieves data about the courses from a

Figure 1.

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database, and up-to-date timetables are created dynamically based on the courses thestudent is attending the current semester (Figure 2).

This service allows students to view lecture hours for one week. Based on thecurrent context (the date, identity of the user and the courses the student isattending), the application server looks up the relevant lecture hours and roomnumber and returns the data to the client application. The information is presentedto the user in a calendar-like fashion, allowing quick navigation between the days ofthe week. The codes of the relevant courses are stored in the user’s profile in thedatabase. Currently, the application gets the lecture data in real-time from theofficial timetable pages available on the NTNU web site, located at http://ntnu.1024.no. From the calendar one can access the map that can show where the lecture orexercises are held.

Twitter services. A Twitter service is developed for MSIS to provide students acollaboration tool for academic and entertainment purpose. This service is integratedwith the twitter system. To build this application, twitter APIs are used and users canuse their existing twitter accounts on this application. The idea is to provide a platformon mobile devices in the context of MSIS for students where they can follow theirlecturer updates, collaborate and communicate (Figure 3).

This service contains several features, which provide an opportunity to the studentsto communicate and collaborate with their fellows, teachers or they can also follow thecourse. Users can access public time-line and direct messages from followers. User canalso send replies and can post new tweets.

Mobile e-mail. A mobile e-mail client is developed for MSIS. This service providessecure e-mail communication to the student’s e-mail server at NTNU. It providesroutine e-mail services such as accessing e-mails, sending e-mails (Figure 4).

Figure 2.

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Figure 3.

Figure 4.

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Feed based information services. This service is developed for MSIS to work withdifferent kinds of feeds such as RSS and ATOM feeds. NTNU is providing feed basednews, announcements, updates and other notification services. This service providesdifferent features to subscribe and manage different feeds from the sources of student’schoice. This service also provides offline feeds by providing compact database on themobile device. This service is quite general; but the basic idea was to create feeds forthe courses the students are taking during the semester. Based on the feeds providedfor the course, students will be able to subscribe their courses to get updates orannouncements. This service can be utilized in a variety of ways depending on theuser’s choice (Figure 5).

Collaboration service. This service provides collaboration tool for the students. Itprovides features such as creating groups based on course-enrollment and sendingmessages to that group, reading messages from different groups students have joined.In addition to group messages users can send and receive personal messages. Userscan create groups of their own choice and can join any group of his choice and interest(Figure 6).

Managing learning resources. This service provides functionality for themanagement of learning resources related to the courses and others. Users cancheck and download the available learning resources based on the registered courses.Users can also add and update the learning resources from the mobile device by usingthis service (Figure 7).

MSIS administration interfaceThe administration interface is a set of web-based tools for managing MSIS. It isaccessible through a standard web browser, and allows users of MSIS to manage theirown profile and personal preferences. In the future it could also be extended to provide

Figure 5.

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administrators access to various parts of the system, for example allow coursesupervisors to edit their lecture schedule, or simplify the addition of new locations. Theadministration interface is implemented with ASP.NET technology, and makes use ofthe web services for database access.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

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4. Description of evaluation with some main resultsPreliminary surveyInitially, a survey was conducted to find which type of services and functionality thatwas perceived to be valuable for students to provide up to date information. Anelectronic questionnaire was created to enable rapid distribution and computer aidedanalysis of the gathered data. The respondents were mainly technology students whowere familiar with computers and internet technology. A total of 89 respondentscompleted the survey. After gathering the feedback from the target user group, we tooksome design decisions for MSIS. We found that there is need for more personalizedinformation, customized to the individual student’s curriculum, i.e. the informationservices should be more user-centric. Ultimately, we ended with several mobile servicesfor the students that are promising to enhance the campus life for the student. Thedecision of which services to include in MSIS was largely influenced by the feedbackgathered from the survey.

Usability and user acceptance testTo measure the expected take-up of MSIS and its services, a usability and acceptancetest was performed. A user-driven evaluation of the MSIS service has been conductedamong a group of 79 NTNU students. The utility and usability of the system wereevaluated by applying observational and empirical evaluation methods in the actualcampus-environment. The user tests identified numerous issues with the initial design,and suggested ideas for enhancements that have been implemented in the currentversion of the system. The mobile service acceptance model (MSAM) (Gao et al., 2010)has been used to examine the factors that are influential for user adoption of mobileservices in light of our project. The MSAM instrument measures different facets of amobile information service, some taken from standard technology acceptance modelssuch as the perceived usefulness, ease of use, and intention to use, but also includingaspects relating to the mobile context and user characteristics developed particularlyas part of MSAM.

We explored the attitude of students toward such a system in order to establish ameasure of user acceptance. The test group consisted of students from various studyprograms, including people with both technical and non-technical background. Most ofthe survey participants had at least one mobile device and had some previousexperience with mobile applications. Before commencing the test, the participants weregiven a brief introduction to the MSIS system and the services it provides. A mobiledevice with the application pre-installed was handed out. The usability test was carriedout in accordance with the inspection evaluation method, in an environmentresembling a real-world situation for the students. The “think-aloud protocol” wasapplied to elicit cognitive feedback from the participants during the tests. Each testlasted for approximately 45 minutes. Different scenarios were used to test the servicesof MSIS system. We performed the test with two to four users at the same time. It was atime consuming task, but it had several advantages. Some of the test persons wereinterviewed after completing the test to elicit detailed feedback regarding particularparts of the scenarios. As such, several usability evaluation methods were applied togather as much information as possible from the tests.

The mobile service acceptance model (MSAM) (Gao et al., 2010) was used toestimate the intention to use such a system, its usefulness and usability of MSIS

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system. The respondents were asked to evaluate the system according to a number ofconstructs given in the questionnaire. To measure the impact of these constructs onmobile service adoption, the respondents were asked to specify their degree ofagreement with a total of 33 statements (measurement items). A seven-point Likertscale, with 1 being the negative end of the scale (Strongly disagree) and 7 being thepositive end of the scale (Strongly agree), was used to measure participants’ responsesto items in the questionnaire. These ratings were then analyzed to estimate theindividual’s intention to use the application. The instrument also describes how factorssuch as context, personal initiative, and trust influence the user adoption of the mobileservice. The survey seek to address the behavioral aspects of information systemresearch; human and organizational impacts of IS design and implementation, whichaccording to (Hevner et al., 2004) are an important determinant for final acceptance ofthe system.

Some main resultsWe here present some main descriptive results from the test. The test participantsfound all the services of MSIS very interesting. As expected, we observed that juniorstudents rated the usefulness of the system higher than some of the senior students.This applies in particular to the location service, considering senior students are morefamiliar with the campus area than new students. They could easily see how theavailability of a service like this would have been beneficial when they first started atuniversity, although they might not need it as much today. The schedule service,however, was perceived as useful for both juniors and seniors. With the large amountof meeting rooms, classrooms, halls, and other student relevant locations at theuniversity, it is convenient to have a location search service to make it easy to find theright location.

Here we analyze and present three major constructs of MSAM:

(1) perceived usefulness;

(2) intention to use; and

(3) perceived ease of use.

According to the results, the location search tool was perceived as the most usefulservice as 96 percent answered in the area of five to seven on the 1-7 scale thatthe service would be useful for them as students. Of respondents, 92 percent found thisservice easy to use and they didn’t feel any difficulty to use the service. We also foundthat 84 percent respondents showed the intention to use the service.

Test results of the schedule service showed that 86 percent respondents found ituseful and 81 percent respondents showed interest to use the service but with someimprovements. Only 16 percent people respond that the service is difficult to use while84 percent were satisfied.

The test results of the Twitter service showed that 90 percent respondents found ituseful for academic purpose. As for ease of use, 85 percent found it easy to use. Only 76percent respondents showed intention to use it for academic purpose. On the whole, weevaluated this service as a useful part of MSIS as a collaboration, communication and asocial tool for the students.

The feed based service was used to get updates from the various sources ofinformation based on RSS and ATOM feeds. The acceptance of this service among the

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group of students was about 83 percent. Only 77 percent respondents found it easy touse and 79 percent showed interest to use this service.

Mobile e-mail was another interesting service for the students as they can easilyaccess their student e-mail accounts on the go. Overall, 86 percent showed acceptancefor this service as part of MSIS and 85 percent found it useful for their campus life. Asfor ease of use 78 percent people were satisfied.

Collaboration service received good response as 94 percent students found it veryuseful for group communication for example, a group of students working on a projectcan collaborate by using this service. We found that making groups, joining groupsand sending group messages was very useful for collaborative learning and 91 percentstudents showed interest to use this service but only 79 percent respondents found iteasy to use.

For the learning resource service, the majority 89 percent users were agreed thatthis service would make it easier for them to keep track of their study related resourcesand tasks. By using this service, 85 percent students found it interesting to have theirlearning resource on their mobile devices and showed interest to use it; 78 percentrespondents found it easy to use.

We found almost all the participants positive to the services of MSIS and the systemas a whole. The general perception was that the functionality provided by MSIS is ofgreat value to the students at the campus. The user acceptance survey indicates theperceived usefulness of the system is high among the students.

5. Conclusion and future workIt is believed that the students at NTNU would benefit from more personalized andtargeted information by the mobile services such as provided by MSIS. There is workin progress to expand the location functionality of wireless network coverage in andaround campus, and ongoing initiatives such as the “Wireless Trondheim” (Andersenet al., 2007) are working to extend it even further, proving functionality such as whatwe have experienced with as a publically available service, as a campus guide.Although we see several similar services, they are mostly providing generalinformation, not targeted to the individual student being integrated with standardchannels of information.

References

Andresen, S.H., Krogstie, J. and Jelle, T. (2007), “Lab and research activities in WirelessTrondheim”, Proceedings of 4th IEEE International Symposium on WirelessCommunication Systems, SWCS’07, 18 May 2007, Jamestown, NY, pp. 385-9.

Cobarsı́, J., Bernardo, M. and Coenders, G. (2008), “Campus information systems for students:classification in Spain”, Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 50-64.

Gao, S., Moe, S.P. and Krogstie, J. (2010), An empirical test of the mobile services acceptance model,“An empirical test of the mobile services acceptance model”, Proceedings of the9th International Conference on Mobile Business and the 9th Global Mobility Roundtable(ICMB/GMR 2010), IEEE CS Press, Athens, Greece.

Harvard Mobile (2010), “A mobile solution by Harvard University”, available at, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/harvard-mobile/id389199460 (accessed 10 September 2010).

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Hella, L. and Krogstie, J. (2010), “A profile ontology for personalised mobile shopping support”,Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Adaptation, Personalization andREcommendation in the Social-semantic Web, APRESW 2010, Heraklion, Greece.

Hevner, A.R., March, S.T., Park, J. and Ram, S. (2004), “Design science in information systemsresearch”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 75-105.

Kabassi, K. (2010), “Personalizing recommendations for tourists”, Telematics and Informatics,Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 51-66.

MIT Mobile Web (2009), MITMobile Web Site, available at: http://m.mit.edu (accessed 26 August2010).

MyCampus (2005), My Campus Web Site, available at: http://mcom.cs.cmu.edu/mycampus(accessed 18 August 2010).

Petersen, A.K., Gransaether, A. and Krogstie, J. (2010), “An empirical investigation of attitudetowards location-aware social network service”, International Journal of MobileCommunication, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 53-70.

Yu, C. and Chang, H. (2009), “Personalized location-based recommendation services for tourplanning in mobile tourism applications”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 5692,Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on E-commerce and Web Technologies,Linz, Austria, September 1-4, pp. 1-49.

Further reading

Asif, M. (2009), “Enhancing Student experience on mobile devices: challenges and solution”,specialization project, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.

Asif, M. (2010), “Student centric mobile services: design, implementation and evaluation”, Masterthesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.

Cherim, M. (2008), Twitter for Academia, available at: http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/ (accessed 17 April 2010).

Kuadey, N. and Izaz, H. (2009), “Mobile Collaborative learning system”, specialization project,Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.

Kuadey, N. (2010), “Mobile collaborative learning system”, Master thesis, Norwegian Universityof Science and Technology, Trondheim.

Moe, S. (2008), “Mobile student information system (MSIS)”, depth study, Norwegian Universityof Science and Technology, Trondheim.

Moe, S. (2009), “Design and evaluation of a user centric information systems; enhancing studentlife with mobile computing”, Master thesis, Norwegian University of Science andTechnology, Trondheim.

Corresponding authorMuhammad Asif can be contacted at: [email protected]

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